How Does a NASA Scientist Investigate Earth’s Primary Oxidant if It Can’t Be Seen from Space?

Name: The Processes Behind Ecological Connectivity of a Polar Desert, the McMurdo Dry Valleys Antarctica
Start: 2025-09-15
End: 2025-09-15
Location: Remote via Zoom

This event has passed. See the seminar recording here:

Dr. Julie Nicely

NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

Tuesday September 3, 2019, 12 PM

ESSIC Conference Room 4102, 5825 University Research Ct, College Park, MD 20740

Abstract:

The so-called “detergent of the atmosphere,” tropospheric hydroxyl radical (OH), is a very short-lived and reactive species. This makes it difficult to measure, and its high degree of spatial heterogeneity makes it challenging to constrain on a global scale. Yet, OH plays critical roles in the areas of climate change and air quality. Most notably, OH is the primary sink for atmospheric methane (CH4), the second-most important anthropogenic greenhouse gas, and directly drives the chemical reactions responsible for producing tropospheric ozone and some aerosols, both of which are pollutants that are detrimental to human health. This seminar will discuss the various methods used to understand global oxidizing capacity, through joint analysis of global models as well as ground-based, aircraft, and satellite observations of species related to OH, employing techniques ranging from traditional correlation and 0-D box model analysis to machine learning.

Bio-sketch:

Dr. Julie Nicely is currently an Assistant Research Scientist with ESSIC and performs research at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, MD. She specializes in investigations of Earth’s tropospheric chemistry by utilizing a variety of observations and techniques to interrogate global atmospheric and Earth System models. She has also participated in multiple airborne field campaigns (NASA ATom, NSF CONTRAST), providing chemical forecasts for flight planning and analyzing data collected in real-time. Prior to joining ESSIC in 2019, Dr. Nicely was a Fellow in the NASA Postdoctoral Program at NASA GSFC. She completed degrees in Chemistry at the University of Maryland (Ph.D., 2016) and Duke University (B.S., 2010).

Webinar info:

Event site: http://go.umd.edu/nicely

Event number: 734 228 604
Event password: essic
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